winky cai
Overview --
Every year, over 700,000 individuals are released from our nation’s jails and prisons who are confronting re-entry challenges and social inequality, from housing, jobs to a lack of life skills. In order to building bridges to sccessful reentry, Orie focus on the generic question -- life soft skill acquisition and task management for returning citizens.
DURATION
Aug 2021 - Dec 2021
ROLE
UX Designer, Service design
TEAM
Jiafeng Zhu
CLIENT
City of Chicago
The Goal --
To help returning citizens get appropriate information and better adapt to the society with less burden
Every year over 700,000 individuals are released from our nation’s jails and prisons who are confronting re-entry challenges and social inequality, from housing, and jobs to a lack of life skills. In order to build bridges to successful reentry, Orie focuses on the generic question -- life soft skill acquisition and task management for returning citizens.
The Solution --
Orie: A customized task recommendation system and users-genarated information hub
Orie would have smartly recommended systems to push information and tasks that are relevant to our returning citizens' users. The hub would be created by a variety of stakeholders, including existing users, local business owners, and the government.
The
Content --
-- Ann Jacobs
Director of the Prisoner Reentry Project
John Jay College of Criminal Justice
User Research --
Small moments of Breakdown
Firstly, we conducted the desk research toward social media, understanding their frustration. After then, we turned to the real users, Moncita and Gina, who were released from jails a few months ago. All of them mentioned some trivial moments of breakdown because they need to face too many procedures like going to the parole office, fixing credits, and even some technological problems. However, finding a way to look for help could be another barrier for them.
Pain point --
The gap between returning citizens and the resources they need
Therefore, we found not only the process of returning citizens to resources go separately, but also the agencies themselves. Some of them provide overlapped information with each other, resulting in information overload toward users. As a result, how to bridge the gap between returning citizens and resources would be an opportunity for us.
Opportunities --
What are they looking for?
From the research and finding we identified above, we could turn it into the following three opportunities
what
Know to do
Organizing
Understanding how to organize their own life, and make their daily plan after living within the inmate schedules set by others
Know to do
how
Experience
Provide returning citizens with a channel to connect, and encourage the experienced one to share more information.
Emotion
Less anxiety
Keep calm &
Make the transition process much easier and assist users in avoiding embarrassment caused by a lack of tech knowledge.
Experience Model --
The gap between returning citizens and the resources they need
Therefore, we found not only the process of returning citizens to resources go separately, but also the agencies themselves. Some of them provide overlapped information with each other, resulting in information overload toward users. As a result, how to bridge the gap between returning citizens and resources would be an opportunity for us.
Skill Pool --
The content contributors
As the core part of Orie, the skill pool has different kinds of content contributor. Official Capacity contribute to the pool and Users not only contributes content, but also gets help from the content.
Skills Distributing --
The gap between returning citizens and the resources they need
For those who have been in prison for more than 5 years, the time outside is changing with each passing day. So, after they are released from prison, they may encounter a whole new world, so they need to learn more basic life skills.
The basic life skill and skill for wellbeing are aimed at different groups of people.
Other returning citizens are needed to be focused more on how to get resources for the social wellbeing
Use Case 1#
Community Preview -- Enhancing engagement
Within a short time before released, our user can get in touch with Orie through tablet provided in the prison.
By providing the time spent in prison, Orie can give more suitable recommendations of life skills for the user. By entering the address, user is able to preview the community through street views to see what social services are provided in the area.
Use Case 1#
Community Preview -- Get prepared
By clicking into the detail page, user can explore the related activities in the store. A brief guidance about specific skills needed in the service will be provided, making user more prepared when they return.
Use Case 2#
Set To-do-list -- Help prioritizing everyday tasks
After released, users can get in touch with Orie and start to explore and plan for the day.
To make the experience less like homework, Orie will provide the recommended tasks with bubbles. The colors and sizes indicate the priority of the tasks.
Users can easily dump the tasks they want to finish into the daily schedule. Also, they can explore the public services nearby by viewing on the map.
Explore daily To-Dos
Add new activity
Use Case 2#
Start an activity -- Step by step guidance
By clicking on the bubble, user can view the guidance of the skills needed to complete the task. The guidance will have several steps, with both text and video tutorials available.
Moreover, When the empty space is fully occupied by bubbles, system will remind the user that today is already really busy, to better suggest user to control the quantity of activities for a day.
Activities quantity recommended
Activities’ brief
Use Case 2#
Physical version available -- Go at ease without smart device
For those who donot own a smartphone, Orie also has a web version. Users can access Orie with public resources such as desktops in public library.
After learning about each step needed to finish the task, users can print out the guidance to help them out during practise.
Use Case 2#
Start an activity -- Step by step guidance
When users arrive on site, they can also use the AR guidance function to assist their practise.
The AR will show the important or hidden information needed to finish the task, helping users to achieve the goal efficiently.
Use Case 3#
Explore stories from other users -- Gaining more experience
Orie will collect the experience stories uploaded by official agencies and other users.
Users can view the recommended stories near to their current location to better explore the services available nearby.
Use Case 3#
Orie will consider connecting with the review functions of existing platforms such as Google Map and Yelp to encourage more citizens to upload their experience to enrich the skill pool.
City Incentives -- Gaining more contributed content
Future Direction --
Expand Potential Audience
First Phase
Currently, the main and permanent content contributors are official agencies and local shop owners while other citizens and returning citizens will contribute less to the pool.
In the future, we plan to expand our potential audiences to those who also need the functions of Orie, such as tourists and community workers.
With consistent content exchange, other returning citizens as well as other stakeholders will have more motivation to enrich the pool.
Future Phase